Posted
by
timothyon Thursday April 28, 2011 @04:44PM
from the geek-makes-good dept.

Lucas123 writes "Greg Chamitoff, a computer programmer who wrote software for NASA's Endeavour spacecraft, will be blasting off on shuttle's final 15-day flight as a mission specialist on Friday. Chamitoff, who created software focused on spacecraft analysis and maneuver optimization, will operate the space station's robotic arm, and he'll also take part in two spacewalks."

Hasn't he seen a single science fiction movie?!?!? He'll be the comic-relief nerdy guy on the crew, who the pretty astronaut just regards as a friend, who gets killed about two-thirds the way through the mission--after providing a few laughs and some expertise in getting the escape shuttle at the abandoned space station online. No way is he going to make it to the sequel mission.

[the crew is on a shuttle descending to an alien planet]Guy Fleegman: I changed my mind. I wanna go back.Sir Alexander Dane: After the fuss you made about getting left behind?Guy Fleegman: Yeah, but that's when I thought I was the crewman that stays on the ship, and something is up there, and it kills me. But now I'm thinking I'm the guy who gets killed by some monster five minutes after we land on the planet.Jason Nesmith: You're not gonna die on the planet, Guy.Guy Fleegman: I'm not? Then what's my last name?Jason Nesmith: It's, uh, uh - -I don't know.Guy Fleegman: Nobody knows. Do you know why? Because my character isn't important enough for a last name, because I'm gonna die five minutes in.Gwen DeMarco: Guy, you have a last name.Guy Fleegman: DO I? DO I? For all you know, I'm "Crewman Number Six"! Mommy... mommy...Sir Alexander Dane: Are we there yet?

Or it could be one of those freaky "no longer human" situations. Maybe the mission will encounter an alien craft that just happens to be exploring our solar system during the last flight of Endeavor. Then Chamitoff will heroically volunteer to merge with the aliens to create a new hybrid life form, and he/it will go off to colonize a new planet. Sweeping orchestral music will play, as the crew of Endeavor looks on fondly.

Then they will realize that only Chamitoff had the login password for the compute

Oh, he has! The problem is, he actually thinks some Evil Martian type will put a gun to his head and tell him to implement a quicksort all while a pretty green alien female massages one of his lower extremities with what looks suspiciously like a mouth appendage.

As noted by a more intelligent responder, and discovered by myself when I re-parsed the original sentence after reading your reply, the line in question was missing a "the" throwing off the whole meaning of the thing. You can talk about apostrophes all you like but people misuse them so often who can you rely on THAT to inform you of meaning over the actual words used in a sentence?

In the end all we have ended up showing here is you lack the ability to analyze a sentence for grammatical errors, and that yo

What is your point? The June launch is a shuttle too, the shuttle Atlantis. There is more than one space shuttle you know.

His point was that the "shuttle" in question was already identified as the Endeavor. They didn't say shuttles' final flight, they said shuttle's.

That said, they did screw up the sentence, so I see why you were confused. It should read, "Greg Chamitoff, a computer programmer who wrote software for NASA's Endeavour spacecraft, will be blasting off on the shuttle's final 15-day flight..."

I've been a controls programmer for fifteen years and this guy gets to write control software for a freaking space shuttle. As if that's not enough glory already, now he gets to fly in it and space walk! Lucky bastard! I hate you! Next month he'll probably win the lottery too.

Wow. I had seriously written off ever getting off this rock because only hands-on science specialists ever get the seats, no matter who it is. As people in arguably the world's most remotable profession, I assumed we were doomed.

Seriously though, this isn't his first time in space. He's an experienced astronaut who was on the International Space Station for half a year and has multiple high level degrees in engineering, astronautics and planetary geology. He's a recipient of the esteemed Silver Snoopy Award and is literally a friggin' Eagle Scout.

This is great. I had Greg as a lecturer when I was at Sydney University in the mid 90s. He's a great guy and really enjoyed his lectures on flight mechanics. He came back a few years ago and shared with us some of his experiences with the astronaught training program.By the way, he's not a random programmer. He's an aeronautics PhD and a few other degrees to boot.

I don't want to downplay the guys work, but after reading his bio, I don't think he actually wrote any of the software used onboard the space shuttle AP101/S computers in HAL/S language. I think his code runs in the FCRs (Flight Control Rooms). It may also run on laptops taken onboard or on the space station, but not on the shuttle. My code runs on all three systems - shuttle, MCCs, and space station.

I worked writing GN&C code for the shuttles for 5 yrs and for the mission control centers around the